I have received many questions about how the LVFR A330 compares to the Headwind Simulations A330. I had not used Headwind so I downloaded and installed it.
Basically, I think any comparison comes down to your Airbus family preference. If you fly the FBW A320, Headwind is the obvious choice. If you fly the Asobo or LVFR A320, then LVFR should be your choice. That said, I found a few differences between the two besides cost.
- LVFR has OANS! Headwind will probably have it someday. OANS adds a ZOOM range selection allowing for the detailed top-down image of an airport, taxiways, and gates at the current aircraft location. It works great!
- LVFR has a trim tank that works automatically per specs. Headwind does not. Puzzling!
- LVFR has interior cabin views matching the livery. Eye candy? Maybe. It does show a lot of attention to detail. Headwind has the standard look outside through the window views.
- There seems to be a lot of secondary flight control lag in the Headwind. Moving the flaps and speed brakes seem to take forever, so long that I thought my keybind was broken. I did not notice any lag with LVFR.
- Study level? Headwind - Yes, LVFR - No. if you want to fly a study-level aircraft, then Headwind is the choice. LVFR has never claimed to be study-level so there are more things INOP. Are the INOPS important? I spent almost the entire flight trying out the Headwind EFB. The Navigraph/SimBrief implementations seem similar.
- Realism - This quality is subjective and often “immersion” is part of this quality. My “immersion” using the Headwind was not good probably due to my lack of experience with the FBW A320. For example, after takeoff and climbing through the skies, a pop-up message was displayed saying my throttles weren’t calibrated and to use the flypad to calibrate. I have not read any of the Headwind/FBW documentation nor have I viewed the many YouTube tutorials. More experienced fliers would be able to fix this right away. The message didn’t provide a lot of information. Do I have to land right away or restart my flight? Can I continue without calibration without falling out of the sky? I assumed the flypad was a menu item in the EFB which it is. But there wasn’t anything helpful to find throttle calibration. I eventually found the right screen. But now what do I do? Confused, I just took the defaults, saved, and exited. Meanwhile ATC kept yelling at me for not descending. I tried to tell ATC I was busy calibrating my throttles but it didn’t matter. I ended up flying a missed approach because I was way too high. And my co-pilot was useless. There were other random pop-ups about Telex and other things which I’m sure are great features but having these pop-ups while flying an approach definitely breaks any immersion (and distracts the pilot).
I am not a big fan of study-level aircraft but many are. I think it is great to have multiple A330s from different vendors allowing pilots to pick and choose what works best for them. Or to fly both. The sky is big enough! I’m looking forward to future releases from both of these developers.